KPVI reports from Idaho. "In Bonneville County in September, the number of offers to reduce a price in order to induce a sale tripled over the same month last year. The number that could prevent an overall record year in sales is the number of homes sold lately, in September and October, 189 this year, versus almost 100 more in 2006."

"Jim Windmiller: 'I don't have the California and Nevada people buying many homes here anymore.'"

"And Californians and others were the ones buying homes of more than $300,000. Jim Windmiller: 'Their market has come down a lot, so those people are not selling out, moving to Idaho and buying our bigger units.'"

The Gazette Times from Oregon. "Last August Lori DeBord sat down with a mortgage broker and stretched, taking out a subprime loan to buy her first home, a modest 1,200-square-foot condo in southeast Albany. The interest rate was high, 9.75 percent, but she figured she could swing the monthly payments."

"It was a proud moment, but it didn’t last. First she lost her second job, then her son’s disability benefits. Now she’s six months behind on her mortgage payments and on the verge of losing her home to foreclosure. 'I gave up,' she said. 'I just went, 'I don’t have the money.'"

"Thousands of Oregonians have subprime mortgages, the kind that have been making bad-news headlines nationwide. In Oregon, subprime loans are 11 times more likely to be in foreclosure than prime rate loans, according to a recent study."

"'Oregon has actually fared better than many other states, and we believe it is in large part due to continued appreciation of home values in our state,' said Berri Leslie, the mortgage lending program manager for the state Division of Finance & Corporate Securities."

"But, she added, there are 'pockets of concern' in places such as Medford and Bend, where home prices shot up rapidly in recent years. In the mid-valley, the problem is worse in some places than in others."

"'It’s a little harder hit in Albany, Lebanon and Sweet Home, where incomes tend to be a little lower,' said Tom Kosta, a senior loan officer with the Corvallis office of Meridian Mortgage."

"Linn County, however, has 255 properties either in arrears, scheduled for auction or already foreclosed by the lender. Counselors at Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services say...they are getting more calls on the matter than they used to."

"'Most people don’t realize what they’re getting into until they’re at the closing table,' said Ken Smith, homeownership program coordinator for the Corvallis-based nonprofit. 'Yeah, people should know better. But people don’t.'"

"In Oregon, said Angela Martin of Our Oregon, there are roughly 40,000 families with 'exploding ARM' loans that will reset to a higher rate this year or next. 'We’re looking at a large number of borrowers — who are about to face their first payment shock,' she said."

"'A lot of folks went into this believing the person that was representing them to get a loan was representing their best interests,' Martin said. 'The market was going well. Homes were sold on the promise that, yeah, you can’t afford this now, but in a few years you’ll be able to refinance.'"

The Register Guard from Oregon. "Rather than selling the lots in his latest subdivision to builders, developer David Corey is looking to individual buyers to purchase the upscale home sites in Legacy Estates, south of the Mc­Kenzie River in the Hayden Bridge area of north Springfield."

"'Most of the time, developers sell lots in subdivisions like Legacy Estates to builders, but with the housing market the way it is now, too many builders have too much inventory, and they’re not looking for more,' Corey said."

"'Most of the time, I’d be selling all 20 of these lots to builders — in fact, at one point I had all 20 reserved by three builders, but now only one of them’s still planning to go ahead,' he said. 'I’m prepared that things may move slowly over the winter and not pick up until spring, but that’s just the way it is.'"

"Meanwhile, the slower housing market notwithstanding, other developers in the Eugene-Springfield area also continue to bring new subdivisions to the market."

The Seattle Times from Washington. "Puget Sound-area new-home developers, motivated by an increasingly soft real-estate market, are resorting to something they haven't done in years. They're enticing buyers with big TVs, motorcycles and other inducements."

"Now there's a four- to 13-month inventory in King and Snohomish counties of new houses, town houses and condominiums available, according to New Home Trends, a Bothell data-research firm. That's spawned a goody-laden battle for buyers."

"'We got the mortgage flu, and got a few more homes on the books than we'd like to be carrying right now,' confesses a local home builder who declined to be named because he's prohibited from talking to the media. 'There have been an awful lot of homes that came back to us' after the initial buyers backed out.'"

"A Pierce County builder learned that when he tried to lure buyers to a $489,000 new house with a plasma-screen TV. There were no takers, so he lowered the price and threw in a new $23,000 Harley-Davidson motorcycle."

"'We didn't get any bites, any low-ball offers, nothing,' recounts real-estate agent Jeff Jensen."

"'As a first-time buyer in this market,' says Brandon Smith, 'not only would I expect an incentive to help pay closing costs, but I would also need to feel I wasn't paying a price based on the real-estate frenzy of the last few years.'"

"That feeling caused Smith to cancel a recent deal on a new Everett condo. The developer offered a $7,000 buyer bonus, but Smith decided the asking price was too high."

"'Sure enough, just days after I backed out of the sale, the asking price of all units in the complex were dropped by 7 or 8 percent,' Smith says."

The News Tribune from Washington. "An ambitious deal between the City of Tacoma and a Seattle developer to create affordable housing for artists on a downtown parking lot site is crumbling."

"The city has told Catapult Community Developers that it’s in default on its development agreement to create a 76-unit, 150,000-square-foot housing, retail and parking structure across Market Street from the Tacoma Municipal Building."

"Catapult principal Michael Trower said the development company is discussing options with the city, including return of the land to city ownership. Trower said an oversupply of new housing units in downtown Tacoma, coupled with rapidly rising construction costs, put the project in deep freeze."

"On the same block as the Art Lofts project, developers turned the former Tacoma YMCA into a condominium project and are selling units in the Roberson Condominiums next door. Nearby, the Walker Condominiums are also for sale."

"Trower said Catapult caught the first wave of buyer interest with the other projects, but a surge in condominium and apartment construction, combined with a credit crunch, is slowing the market." "'There are some developers who are building now who wish they weren’t,' Trower said."